The Peyton Manning statue has finally been unveiled, and the verdicts are rolling in.

As you're judging the work of artist Ryan Feeney — and subcontractors including Martin Kuntz at Creative Works and Sean Neal at Sincerus Bronze Art Center — a little art expertise can help you form an informed opinion.

To give us some insight, IndyStar asked Julia Muney Moore, the director of public art for the Arts Council of Indianapolis, to watch the unveiling and offer some context.

The face looks exactly like him! It doesn't look like him at all!

Depending on your eye, you could have either of these reactions. First, Muney Moore acknowledged how difficult it is for an artist to capture someone's face.

When a face is in bronze, artists have to deal with the aesthetic realm of the "uncanny valley," she said.

"You know it's fake but it looks real but it's almost too real to be real, so it has that unrealness about it," Muney Moore said. "It's this weird kind of headspace."

"There are going to be people who are looking at him and are saying 'That doesn't look like him at all,' " Muney Moore said. "There are people who look at it and say, 'That looks exactly like him.' "

The sculptor must get the essence of the person in a format that's static. Muney Moore said people are used to seeing Manning moving, and that forms their memory of him.

"It's supposed to be the artistic interpretation, not the actual person in reality," Muney Moore said.

Why are parts of the statue so dark?

That's called toning. Muney Moore said the artist chose a contrast between a more polished bronze and a less polished, textured bronze.

In the finishing stages, a patina, which offers a more textured look, was rubbed on the parts of the statue that would be blue or darker, Muney Moore said. The lighter bronze corresponds with the lighter colors of the uniform. In areas such as Manning's pants, the two combine to give the sculpture a lifelike feel.

"Usually if something's textured, the sun kind of helps give it that sense of realism, but I think the artist wanted to make sure that that sense of realism and that texture and that really three-dimensionalness of it was going to come out whether there was sun shining on it to bring it out or not," Muney Moore said.

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What does the pose mean for his legacy?

That anyone would ever wonder who Manning is sounds absurd right now. But statues are meant to show legacies to future generations — and the pose carries that information, Muney Moore said.

"This is a characteristic pose that anyone would recognize what he was doing, what it meant, and how it was emblematic of his whole, entire career," Muney Moore said.

CLOSE

Ryan Feeney must know every angle of Peyton Manning. From his earlobe to his elbow. From his fingernail to his ankle bone. Feeney is sculpting the bronze statue of Peyton Manning that will be on display at Lucas Oil Stadium.
Matt Kryger/IndyStar

Manning's pose — in full Colts garb and looking to throw during a game — cements his football greatness in people's memory. As another example, Muney Moore mentioned the mural of basketball great Dr. J, or Julius Erving, in Philadelphia. He's depicted in a suit that shows his contributions as a role model more than as a sports star. That will impact future generations who see it.

What are the benefits of a bronze statue versus one that's stone?

But bronze allows the artist to sculpt an action pose because the initial sculpture that the mold is made from is clay, which is malleable.

"Once the clay is on there, you can do anything. You can change the number, you can change the stitching … you can make it do whatever it needs to do to serve the artistic goals of the piece," Muney Moore said.

The finished product allows for a sense of motion.

"If you look at the sculpture, he's back on one leg, he's got one foot up — that unbalanced pose, that's something you can't get in stone," she said.